Product Information

Publisher's Description

The church is on the verge of some tremendous changes. Contemporary church growth, despite its many blessings to believers, has failed to stem the decline of Christianity in the West. These times require a different kind of churcha church where every person is living a mission-sent life. The Bible uses the word apostles for Jesus followersthat is, people sent on Jesus behalf. In every existing form of the contemporary churchfrom the mega to the multi to the incarnationalsome churches have taken the idea of apostolic mission seriously. Successful church leaders are discovering how to shift their existing resources and church structures into more adaptable forms to reach their communities. In this book, Alan Hirsch and David Ferguson share inspiring stories about leaders who have diagnosed their churches failure to embrace a biblical model of mission and have moved toward a fuller expression of the gospel. On the Verge will help pastors and church leaders discover how these forerunners and their insights are launching a new apostolic movementand how any church can get involved.

Author Bio

Alan Hirsch is an award-winning author on various aspects of missional Christianity and co-founder of Future Travelers, an intentional learning journey for contemporary churches seeking to transition to becoming authentic movements
Dave Ferguson is a spiritual entrepreneur and the lead pastor of Community Christian Church, an innovative multi-site missional church with eleven locations in Chicago. Dave is the movement leader for NewThing, an international network of reproducing churches. He is also the coauthor of The Big Idea. Check out the latest from Dave on his blog (www.daveferguson.org) or follow his everyday adventures on twitter @daveferguson.

Book Review: On the Verge: A Journey into the Apostolic Future of the Church

The authors, Alan Hirsch and Dave Ferguson, point out the need for doing and being church in a new way and they provide a pathway for those wishing to discover and develop that new way. They state that the task of their book "is nothing less than to call the church to recover her most ancient, her most potent, and also her most beautiful form". They write "to help birth the paradigm shift, to compellingly describe it, and then to help churches practically implement it". Alan and Dave understand the data collected over the last decade clearly shows the serious decline of the North American church and they believe they have a solution to reverse that decline so that Christ is honored and people are brought to Him. Whether you agree with their conclusions or not I would urge you to take this journey with them through reading the book to help you discern what you should do and be in order to address this decline. How will you personally honor Christ and lead others to Him?

Alan states "On the Verge is really a serious attempt to process and apply the Apostolic Genius paradigm developed in The Forgotten Ways, to existing (largely evangelical and evangelistic) churches, as well as to other existing church systems." Dave states "I'm trading my life to catalyze a movement of reproducing churches". Alan is a strategist and theologian and he brings "systemic and architectural perspectives" to the process. Dave is a "practitioner" and he addresses how a church can really implement the process they lay out in the book.

The book is written by both men as a dialogue. In each chapter one man gives a proposal and the other provides a response. The pathway or map in the book is divided into four parts: Imagine, Shift, Innovate and Move with the purpose in mind to move the reader along the journey to discovering a new way of thinking about church. They seek to give God His rightful place in the process by urging the reader to turn to God for the conclusions and solutions to be drawn while on this journey.